“They have to get here.”
“There’s gas. There’s light. Why aren’t there plug-ins? Why can’t someone go down to the town, go to a hardware and get me a damned power extension and a screw-in plug? I could sacrifice a ceiling light. The historic walls wouldn’t suffer defacement.”
“There isn’t a hardware. The town of Maidingi is a very small place, nadi Bren.”
“God.” His head was starting to hurt, acutely. His blood pressure was coming up again and he was dizzy, the light and warmth and noise of the fire all pouring into his senses as he groped after the fireplace stonework. “Banichi, why is Tabini doing this?”
“Doing what, nadi? I don’t think the aiji-ji has a thing to do with hardwares in Maidingi.”
He wasn’t amused. He leaned his back against the stones, folded his arms and fixed Banichi with an angry stare, determined to have it put, one way or the other. “You know,‘doing what.’ I could feel better if I thought it was policy. I don’t feel better thinking it might be something I’ve done, or trouble I’ve made for Tabini—I like him, Banichi. I don’t want to be the cause of harm to him, or to you, or to Jago. It’s my man’chi. Humans are like that. We have unreasonable loyalties to people we like, and you’re going far past the surface of my politeness, Banichi.”
“Clearly.”
“And I still like you, damn you. You don’t shake one of us, you don’t fling our liking away because your man’chi says otherwise, you can’t get rid of us when we like you, Banichi, you’re stuck with me, so make the best of it.”
There wasn’t a clear word for like. It meant a preference for salad greens or iced drinks. But love was worse. Banichi would never forgive him that.
Banichi’s nostrils flared, once, twice. He said, in accented Mosphei’, “What meaning? What meaning you say, nand’ paidhi?”
“It means the feeling I have for my mother and my brother and my job, I have for Tabini and for you and for Jago.” Breath failed him. Self-control did. He flung it all out. “Banichi, I’d walk a thousand miles to have a kind word from you. I’d give you the shirt from my back if you needed it; if you were in trouble, I’d carry you that thousand miles. What do you call that? Foolish?”
Another flaring of Banichi’s nostrils. “That would be very difficult for you.”
“So is liking atevi.” That got out before he censored it. “Baji-naji. It’s the luck I have.”
“Don’t joke.”
“I’m not joking. God, I’m not joking. We have to like somebody, we’re bound to like somebody, or we die, Banichi, we outright die. We make appointments with grandmothers, we drink the cups strangers offer us, and we don’t ask for help anymore, Banichi, what’s the damned point, when you don’t see what we need?”
“If I don’t guess what you like, you threaten to ruin my reputation. Is this accurate?”
The headache was suddenly excruciating. Things blurred. “Like, like, like—get off the damned word, Banichi. I cross that trench every day. Can’t you cross it once? Can’t you cross to where I am, Banichi, just once, to know what I think? You’re clever. I know you’re hard to mislead. Follow, Banichi, the solitary trail of my thoughts.”
“I’m not a cursed dinner-course!”
“Banichi-ji.” The pain reached a level and stayed there, tolerable, once he’d discovered the limits of it. He had his hand on the stonework. He felt the texture of it, the silken dust of age, the fire-heated rock, broken from the earth to make this building before humans ever left the home-world. Before they were ever lost, and desperate. He composed himself—he remembered he was the paidhi, the man in the middle. He remembered he’d chosen this, knowing there wouldn’t be a reward, believing, at the time, that of course atevi had feelings, and of course, once he could find the right words, hit the right button, find the clue to atevi thought—he’d win of atevi everything he was giving up among humankind.
He’d been twenty-two, and what he’d not known had so vastly outweighed what he’d known.